


The Violet Hour

by just_a_velleity



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, because you know john doesn't exactly say goodness gracious, by which i mean i don't write sex, can you tell I have a thing for sherlock smoking?, don't worry it's not all angsty, john's a closet romantic, non-explicit johnlock, post-TRF angst, post-fall John brings out the masochist in me, some language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_velleity/pseuds/just_a_velleity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's in love with Sherlock and he doesn't even realize it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Violet Hour

It was always the same dream.

Oh, the details differed, but of the thousand desperate faces he hadn’t been able to save, there was one that haunted him. A boy, just barely twenty-one, with eyes that didn’t even bother to plead with fate as he slipped away. Sometimes there was a letter, or the last words of a hero who no longer wanted to be, but it was always the eyes that finished him.

John carried with him the last moments of countless souls.

He would wake up, eyes wild, choking for breath through the tightness in his throat. John learned after a while how to calm himself, tracing circles on the wall to quiet the voices in his head—he couldn’t make the memories disappear, but it was enough to stop the pounding of his heart.

The desert sun seemed to have worked its way into his veins, though, because John found himself—not _missing_ it—he really didn’t have a good answer for what it was. His hands trembled and his doctor gave him a cane for the limp that wouldn’t go away. John refused to use it for a few days—canes were for old men and tap dancers, and John had no intentions of becoming either. Finally the pain won out over his stubborn streak, and the cane became his companion. Miserable company, really, but better than the ache.

…

When Mike suggested a flatmate to him, John accepted because his meager surgeon’s pay barely covered the rent, let alone therapy. After that first night, though, there was no going back.

God, Sherlock was infuriatingly brilliant. He could deduce more about John in a glance than his therapist had been able to draw out in months. It only took one night of chasing through the London streets for John to get addicted to the adrenaline rush all over again, and he was hooked.

Living with the man, though, was another matter. He kept a goddamn _skull_ on the mantle, and seemed to be better friends with it than most people. The erratic violin music was definitely not the worst thing, that lying bastard. That honor would have to go to the head in the fridge sitting next to John’s lunch. He refused to put milk in Sherlock’s tea for days after that incident.

It was all worth it to walk with Sherlock Holmes, because John missed the battlefield like nothing else.

…

The dreams still wouldn’t go away, though, and he woke up in a cold sweat at night, heart pounding in his ears after every time he had to watch him die. John wore nail marks into the night table where he gripped it too tight, just in search of something solid. Thank God he’d trained himself not to scream.

Or so he thought.

They were sitting at breakfast one morning, Sherlock laser-focused on Lestrade’s latest delivery and John perusing the news while spreading jam on his toast, when Sherlock looked up.

 “Did you know you cry out in your sleep?”

John tensed.

“I think your violin more than makes up for that, idiot. Put a pillow over your head.”

Sherlock went back to his microscope, unreadable as usual, but John could have sworn he saw him sigh.

…

The pleading nights were the worst. The boy’s desperate, futile prayers were scarred onto John more permanently than any bullet wound.

He didn’t think he would ever forget that voice.

It was one of those nights again, and John laid awake staring holes in the ceiling after the first time he woke up, trying to force himself to wait the night out on sheer willpower.

He must have failed, because the next time he woke up, he had stopped shaking. That in itself was a surprise, and then he realized that he wasn’t alone.

Someone was tracing circles into the inside of his wrist, perfectly in time with the rise and fall of his chest. This hadn’t even crossed John’s mind as something Sherlock would do, but it couldn’t have been anyone else. The gentle, cool touch chased away John’s ragged breath, and instead of protesting, he kept his eyes closed. Anything to make the dreams just go away.

…

The next morning, neither of them mentioned it, and that was perfectly fine with John. At three a.m., all he had wanted was for the guilt and the memories to fade, but here in the daylight it all seemed a bit too real, what Sherlock had done.

They danced around it, and even John thought Sherlock seemed a little edgy. Maybe it was between-cases anxiety, but he glanced up on more than one occasion to find Sherlock examining him apprehensively.

…

John’s life developed a rhythm—an erratic, dangerous rhythm, yes, but a rhythm nonetheless. He lived to the violin song of a slightly mad genius, and that was the way he liked it.

The voice of the dying boy faded from his dreams, replaced by following Sherlock through barely-lit alleys at breakneck pace, Sig in his pocket and feet pounding the pavement. He still woke up with his heart racing on occasion, but it wasn’t for fright.

…

John Watson fell in love slowly.

With the flash of a coattail as it snapped around a corner in hot pursuit, with the heavy sureness of a gun replacing a cane, with the exhilaratingly brilliant deductions he learned to keep up with.

But just as much with the simple moments. With the searing waterfall of a sonata at three in the morning, with mutual chuckling in the Queen’s living room, with learning to make tea-black-one-sugar by muscle memory in addition to his own.

Sherlock, on the other hand, was never one to do things by halves.

…

John didn’t even realize it until he saw Sherlock lying broken on the pavement and his heart shattered right along with him.

When he heard a voice that wasn’t his pleading “Let me through, he’s my—”

 _Friend_ was not the first word he thought of.

He started keeping a notebook full of things he should have said.

It was just going to be a letter. Really, that’s how it started, just something to leave at the graveside because every time he tried to say it the tears took over. But a page turned into two and then three, and John found himself writing his heart onto the page just to stay in control.

_~~I love you~~. There, alright, I did it. Sherlock Holmes, you great bloody infuriating man, I am in love with you. You fucking  left, and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you for that, but I love you. I love you even though you didn’t once buy the milk, and even though you were awful to my girlfriends, and even though you didn’t know the Earth revolves around the Sun. _

_I love you._

A day later,

_I might have kissed you, you know._

At first it was a flood. John would sit down at night and put down pages of blue ink, things he didn’t even realize he knew.

It couldn’t save him from the nightmares, though. He woke up to sobs instead of screams, wracking his body until he was too tired to fight it anymore. There was no one left to press quiet circles into his wrists.

He gave up sleeping until he felt he was going to collapse, just to keep from dreaming. He’d memorized the whole damn phone call, Sherlock’s betrayal of a suicide note, and it played like a soundtrack in the back of every nightmare. He refused to believe it, but that didn’t stop _goodbye, John_ from echoing through his chest.

…

The first few months were hell. Just waking up was a battle, and the days he left the flat he considered successes. Everything seemed to have remnants of Sherlock, all tearing John slowly apart. He just couldn’t bring himself to box any of it up, because that would have meant admitting he was gone.

…

It was going on six months when Mrs. Hudson started checking on him, bringing up tea faster than John could possibly drink it. For a few days, mugs of cold tea piled up around the flat, but eventually John started accepting it.

The warmth felt foreign in his chest.

…

The anniversary was hard. Bless Mrs. Hudson for leaving him alone that day. John had kept Sherlock’s door shut for a year now, hadn’t disturbed anything because he just couldn’t make himself do it, couldn’t even walk past the door without his breath clutching up. Fuck, it was never going to get any easier, so John steeled himself and opened the door.

He regretted that decision as he clung to the doorframe, the only thing keeping him close to upright. The notes Sherlock had tacked to the wall were still there, post-its in varying colors after John had gotten annoyed with him tearing up the paper.

It was when he saw the one with his name on it that John broke.

 _John_ , just _John,_ in messy, angular writing on a green sticky note on Sherlock’s desk. It was probably just an unfinished reminder— _tell John to get the milk, make sure John phones Lestrade_ —but the sight of his name in Sherlock’s handwriting was enough to take his knees out from under him.

John sat outside Sherlock’s door with his head on his knees until he got his breath back, and then he locked the door.

…

Eventually John adjusted to life without Sherlock. He went back to work, even went out for drinks with Mike on occasion. It wasn’t the same—it never would be—but John put up a pretty good façade of normal. He almost managed to believe it.

There were still nights that he woke up tearing at the sheets, but they came fewer and farther between, and for the most part John’s nights were dreamless and black.  He still wrote in the notebook on occasion—an _I miss you_ on the particularly hard days, or just whatever stupid thing Anderson had done. Mostly, though, he got by. He went to bed early and gave up watching crap telly—it wasn’t the same without Sherlock’s snide commentary. He learned to put just half the water in the kettle, and to fall asleep without Bach’s first sonata wafting up through the floorboards. The routine he had settled into kept him just busy enough to forget, just distant enough not to feel. The numbness felt almost pleasant.

…

Nearly three years had gone by, and John hadn’t had the dream in months.

…

It was busy at the clinic that day, patients streaming in and out and noise everywhere, but John felt removed from it all. When he fell asleep that night, he couldn’t place the feeling in his chest.

…

He woke with a start, expertly choking back the scream that wanted to come at the end of all of the dreams. God knew he’d done it often enough. His heartbeat was just finally quieting when he heard something—soft, barely audible, but life with Sherlock had taught him to be careful. He reached for his gun on instinct, slipping the cartridge in without even thinking.

He crept downstairs in trained silence, but when he got to the living room his heart stopped.

It was a hallucination, just another hallucination like the thousand other ones that haunted John everywhere he went—the ghost of a flippant retort, a coat that shouldn’t have been there hanging on the hook.

None of them had been quite like this, though, none so heart-achingly real as the impossible elegance of Sherlock silhouetted against the window, smoke spiraling up from between his fingers.

If this was a hallucination, John wanted it to last as long as possible. Sherlock smoked like an artist, lending his sharp poetry to the flick of his wrist and the glow of the flame. His dark curls were almost blue in the moonlight, and that ivory skin made him look like the world’s most exquisite ghost. The ghost of Sherlock leant slightly out the window, rocking softly on his heels to some invisible music. If he strained, John could catch a whiff of the cigarette smoke that had lingered in the corners of 221B even after he had made Sherlock switch to the nicotine patches.

Now that he thought about it, that had been a good idea for more reasons than one. The image of Sherlock smoking was entirely too distracting.

John was losing himself in this wonderful dream when his hallucination spoke.

“Hello, John.”

John turned around to leave. Watching him smoke was doing things that were all sorts of wrong to his heart, but the voice was too much. He was halfway to the stairs when the hallucination said

“Wait.”

John turned around and there was Sherlock, cigarette in hand, looking as if he was biting something back.

“You’re not real, you can’t be, no—“

“I assure you, you’re not dreaming.”

“That is _exactly_ what made-up Sherlock would say.”

Sherlock shook his head, reached out, and pulled John into his arms.

Okay, that was definitely not something hallucination Sherlock would have done.

John stood there and let Sherlock hug him, because if he let go John wasn’t sure he could keep standing.

“Sherlock, I saw you bloody and broken on the pavement. I buried you, damn it! You _cannot_ be alive.”

“John. Don’t tell me you stopped believing in me.” For a second there was a touch of vulnerability to the crease of his eyebrows, and John saw the man underneath the genius, skinny and ragged and lost. It was only a moment, though, soon replaced by Sherlock’s cold superiority. Of all the things for Sherlock to consider in that moment.

John pulled away. “You know what, Sherlock? For a really long time, I didn’t, and I could barely fucking _function_ because of it! I stopped believing because I was _alone_ too goddamned long!”

“John,” Sherlock whispered, “I was always going to come back. Moriarty’s network was out there, John, and I had to track them down.”

“Would it have been so hard to tell me? You know, if you ever decide to give up being a detective, I hear there are lucrative careers in being a _self-absorbed bastard_!”

John grabbed his coat and stalked out of the flat. It was four in the morning, his best friend was back from the dead, and John just couldn’t deal with this right now.

He ended up on a bench at Regent’s Park, tossing rocks into the lake just for something to throw.

What the hell was he thinking, walking in like that? John wanted to throttle him, punch him black and blue because God, did he deserve it after leaving John alone for three damn years.

John wanted to hit him, but he looked so lost and vulnerable and, damn it, John was still in love with the way he held a cigarette and the indecisive color of his eyes and the brilliant mind of England’s most frustrating genius.

Fuck.

…

John walked back to 221B, breathing back halfway to normal. As he climbed the stairs, he rehearsed his apology in his head. When he saw Sherlock on the sofa, sitting like a human being for once, John knew something was off.

That was when he saw the notebook in Sherlock’s lap.

Goddamn that man and his curiosity. John was blushing furiously as he snatched it out of Sherlock’s hand.

“Tell me you haven’t read this.”

The look in Sherlock’s eyes betrayed him.

“Look, Sherlock. Please just delete—“

John’s sentence was cut off when Sherlock put two fingers to John’s lips and damn near gave him a heart attack.

John’s heart was racing because, oh God, Sherlock had read it and his fingers were on John’s mouth and he wasn’t sure he was ready for this anymore.

“John.”

“Yes?” John managed to choke out. Having his heart in his throat and the man he was hopelessly in love with six inches from his face wasn’t exactly conducive to speech.

“John… this—do you still mean it?”

Sherlock looked so heartbreakingly human that John couldn’t take it.

“Yes,” John said, unable to meet Sherlock’s eyes. He’d spent a lifetime trying to hide the truth from everyone, and here was the one man who he wanted to tell but couldn’t. He wanted to be able to read those pages to Sherlock, use every tiny word as a declaration.

He was trying to get up the nerve to say “I’m in love with you” when Sherlock pulled him onto the sofa. There was a foreign depth in his eyes that was both tempting and completely terrifying.

“This isn’t maybe the best idea.”

“To hell with reason,” Sherlock said, voice muffled by John’s collarbone.

Once John felt Sherlock’s lips on his neck and those black curls brushing his nose, John decided that was a pretty good idea.

He lost himself in Sherlock as they lay there, tangled together and breathless. Sherlock kissed John’s collarbone, his cheek, his ear, everywhere but his lips, and John was going to go crazy.

Finally Sherlock paused and looked him in the eyes. He could fall for ages into those eyes, John thought. He wanted to try.

Sherlock drew it out, leaning in but not closing his eyes until the very last second, and John savored the anticipation. When their lips finally met, John was momentarily incapacitated. Sherlock must have felt him freeze.

“Are you still okay with this?” Sherlock asked.

John recovered just enough to say

“God, yes.”

The smile in Sherlock’s eyes made John want to go right back to kissing him, and that’s what they did. Tentative at first, neither of them really knowing how this was supposed to work. Sherlock held one of John’s hands, tracing circles on the back, and John smiled at the memory. He leaned into the kiss, steady and gentle. There was a small sigh in the back of Sherlock’s throat, and then he took over, pulling John closer and kissing him into oblivion. This was better than any dream. John kissed Sherlock back slowly, searchingly, wanting to memorize the taste of him.

They settled into each other, John’s head on Sherlock’s chest as he listened to his heartbeat. John had analyzed a thousand heartbeats, but none had sounded so much like home. Finally he looked up. Sherlock’s eyes were closed, peaceful, and John wanted to learn just how the shadows felt on his skin.

Sherlock’s eyes fluttered open to find John’s steady gaze, and it wasn’t long before they fell into quiet, sleepy kisses. This, John thought, was how he wanted to wake up every morning for the rest of eternity.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from The Civil Wars' gorgeous song by the same name.
> 
> Comments and constructive criticism greatly appreciated.
> 
> Not britpicked, please let me know if I've made a mistake.
> 
> tumblr: just-a-velleity


End file.
